'The Order' review: Jude Law delivers career-best performance in this gripping crime thriller

Jude Law, the English actor with the pretty blue eyes and sculpted jaw, might seem an unlikely choice to play Terry Husk in Justin Kurzel’s pulse-pounding crime thriller “The Order.” Husk is not only American, not only an FBI agent, but a backwoodsman -- the kind of guy whose weekends involve canned beer, cigarettes, rifles and elk. Yet Law tends toward elegant or even regal roles: a European playboy in “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” a dashing Dr. Watson in “Sherlock Holmes,” the title role in HBO’s “The Young Pope.”

It's amazing what body language and facial expressions – not to mention a non-ironic mustache -- can do. Law doesn’t need much more than that to fully explain this character to us. Though his Husk barely speaks, we learn he’s a workaholic, estranged from his family and in failing health; we also know that his gut instincts are what help him get his man. By the time “The Order” is over, you’ll have seen Law deliver one of the best performances of the year, and possibly of his career.

It helps that the film itself is firing on all cylinders for nearly all of its compact, two-hour running time. In the early 1980s, Husk arrives in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, a quiet rural town that seems to have become the base for an unusually bold and highly aggressive bank robbery ring. (We get pulled into several of these heists, and they’re absolutely terrifying thanks to Kurzel’s adrenaline-fueled direction and Nick Fenton’s swift editing.) It’s all a mystery until a local cop, Jamie Bowen (Tye Sheridan), floats a theory that seemed laughable at the time: The robbers are part of a white supremacist militia, known as simply The Order.

Based on true events, “The Order” is a top-notch action procedural with echoes of recent headlines. (The screenplay is by Zach Baylin, of “King Richard” and “Gran Turismo.”) It turns out there’s a mainstream anti-Jewish church led by Richard Butler (Victor Slezak), but it isn’t radical enough for parishioner Bob Mathews (Nicholas Hoult, in what may also be a career best). Mathews wants race revolution and bloodshed, and he’s using his natural-born charisma to build his army. “You’ve lost your jobs, your dignity,” he tells a crowd of men thirsting for a scapegoat. “It is time for us to fight.”

Husk and Mathews initially play cat-and-mouse, but eventually their game turns deadly, even apocalyptic. Remember the 1984 assassination of Denver radio host Alan Berg (here played beautifully by Marc Maron)? That was The Order. It turns out Husk and his FBI can do only so much. “We’ll have members in Congress, in the Senate,” Butler, the church leader, promises. “That’s how you make change.”

By Rafer Guzmán

rafer.guzman@newsday.com@raferguzman